To live without god beliefs is intellectually stimulating. To find one's own purpose and be responsible for one's own life is exciting. To be free of the imagined surveillance of good and evil spirits is liberating. To seek a peaceful world through work and friendship and civic action is life-affirming.

We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of the country. (Margaret Mead)

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.

But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. (Bertrand Russell)

Believers are no different to the rest of us. No more happy/sad. No more fulfilled/unfulfilled. No more virtuous/wicked. In fact, the only noticeable difference is that they give control over their lives to someone else, to a fictional being and to an interesting but extremely flawed, book.

If you blindly follow his word without asking any questions or demanding to understand the logic behind it, you are, my friend, going against all democratic beliefs of society. We have a word for rulers that do that, they are called dictators.

What if you met an adult who still believed in Santa Claus, based on faith. Would you consider this person admirable for having such strong faith, such strong belief without evidence? Or would you consider him a fool for believing in something so preposterous without any evidence?

What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God. (Bertrand Russell)